


The Lodger

by Vaysh



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amnesia, Berlin (City), Gay Bucky Barnes, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Silent Movies, Winter Soldier Umbrella Warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 12:52:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13682070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vaysh/pseuds/Vaysh
Summary: Five weeks after the events in Washington D.C., the Soldier finds himself watching a silent movie in Berlin. Or: Why Bucky made Bucharest his home.





	The Lodger

**Author's Note:**

> This fic makes many references to Alfred Hitchcock's 1927 silent movie [The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBRDLVXcJDE). You do not need to know the movie to understand the fic. It's a great movie, though, with the unforgettable gay actor [Ivor Novello](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_Novello) in the title role.

 

The bus ride from Tegel airport is uneventful. The Soldier is one of a dozen travelers, marked as different only by the small size of his backpack and his unwillingness to wear a t-shirt with short sleeves. He took the first bus going to a destination sounding familiar. _Alexanderplatz._ It has the ring of old memory to it. He's been here before, not just to Berlin but to Alexanderplatz.

When he gets off the bus night is falling. Nothing looks familiar. Too many colors instead of the familiar tone on tone, the crowds moving in the wrong directions, smells of cooking grease where he expects the typical scent of GDR cleaning soap. His stomach grumbles and he stumbles over tracks that, he could have sworn, had not been on this side of the subway station when he was here before.

But it is like a mission in an unknown city. Get a sense of the place, familiarize yourself with the layout of the streets, with public transport. CCTV, police, military. Alexanderplatz has its usual share of surveillance, both cameras and plainclothes police. The Soldier is not concerned. Nobody poses a threat to him. The cops are observing the tourists and drug dealers sitting around the central fountain. Surveillance is conspicuously inconspicuous. There are fewer guns than the Soldier has come to expect.

He follows a group of tourists along the new streetcar tracks when he sees the familiar building. The word _Pressecafé_ is still on the wall, a reminder that it has not always been a restaurant. The same flat protruding concrete roof, the same faint smell of burnt plastic in the air. The Soldier walks by rote, turns left into the backstreet leading to, leading to, to the –

To a movie theatre, apparently. He looks up to the billboard, lit brightly against the darkening sky. 

"... der Alex, da sind Sie fast da. Die Straße runter, bis zur S-Bahn, und dann links."

The Soldier backs away towards the nighttime square. His heart goes faster than it should, at the familiar sound of a language he's known for more than sixty years. The directions, given by a blonde woman to an American couple, are correct. They _are_ almost at Alexanderplatz. Just down the street, all the way to the elevated line, then left. The Soldier knows this, instinctively, as if he had lived in the city before. He does not remember but his mind knows – street names, angles of buildings, public transport and the broad straight streets, leading out of the city toward the east.

The American couple – she in pink sneakers, he with a bag-strap across his chest – starts moving with an awkward _Danke_ and a smile. They walk down the street leading south, away from the square. The street is well-lit and only a few cars come through at this time of night. To the left is the dark backstreet from where the Soldier just emerged, a shortcut he remembered, remembered from –

The Soldier takes a deep breath. His chest expands underneath the worn cloth, and it feels... It feels. Different. New. He unstraps the backpack and sits on the grass. To his right, a group of teenagers are sprawled on the ground. They share red-labeled Coca Cola and rich-smelling food that makes the Soldier's stomach growl. They don't feed you in the cargo bay, hidden behind the animal cages, trying to move like a big dog, to not be discovered by the infrared scan. He will have to find food soon. He will have to find a place to stay. But not now, not yet. 

The spike of fear, which ran through him just now when he heard German spoken, is ebbing away. He is safe here, as safe as he can be, amidst the Saturday night crowds. People are sitting on the grass, wrapped in the dim light of the streetlamps all around. There are cameras everywhere, badly camouflaged in trees, on traffic signs and above window sills. But with the cap on his head and the beard the Soldier's grown since, since –

The beard he's grown and the cap hide most of his face. It feels like an undercover mission with the weapons concealed in his clothes, and the disassembled M4 in the backpack. Only, this is not a mission. He saw Pierce dead up in the Triskelion. He saw his body, touched his bloodied lips with his own hand, glass shards glittering as the wind crashed through collapsing windows, fire high up in the sky.

The Soldier stretches out and puts his head on the backpack. The sturdy canvas smells faintly of chewing gum. Spearmint, the Soldier thinks. The hard edges of the rifle parts feel safe. It's a warm night, May, but it's warm like summer. He pulls the cap over his face, a tourist tired from taking in the sights. His field of vision reaches from the five-storied houses on the right to a row of similar buildings on the left. The movie theatre on the corner is in front of him. At his six, a guy is sitting on the grass. He is wearing a red cap and a jacket similar to what the Soldier's wearing. The Soldier feels no threat from him. In fact, he's certain that the man would have his back should there be danger. The feeling's founded on exactly nothing; the man isn't even armed. But they exchanged quick glances when the Soldier stepped into the square, assessment as much as greeting. It feels right, an old memory, this one. Maybe, the Soldier thinks, this is how it feels to be a civilian.

He is not, of course. But the Winter Soldier would never have considered trusting a complete stranger, would never have stretched out here in the middle of this wide-open space. The Winter Soldier would have chosen a place with a wall at his back. The Winter Soldier would never have come here. He would still be in Washington, frozen in the bank.

But he is not the Winter Soldier anymore. He wonders lazily what name to give the guy, should he ask for one. The Soldier read a name in the museum. The man on the bridge called him by another name. ( _My name_ , he thinks, and dismisses the thought.) For as long as he’s known, he's been a soldier, and for now, it's enough that he is no longer an asset. He was never a thing that could be locked into a safety deposit box, to be taken out only for deployment. Pierce should have known that, he should have known. Now he is lying bloodied and dead underneath the collapsed tower, while the Soldier escaped and made it out alive. Mission failure, he thinks, and chuckles quietly to himself.

The ground underneath him is warm. A few ants are crawling over his backpack straps. He lays his left hand on the grass, fingers splayed. The city vibrates in his metal bones. He looks up and there are no stars visible. He remembers brilliant star-lit nights in the cold of Siberia. Around him, the square hums with the noises of the evening crowd gathering before the movie theatre. Snippets of conversation drift to him – "Hast du Karten?" – "Wir kommen schon rein." Two bicyclists converse loudly while they race up the street towards a major crossing at his eight, the northeastern corner of the square. The Soldier watches the girl, the way she straddles a men's bike with a skirt.

They come from the left, appear from behind a row of parked cars. It is why he didn’t notice them right away. Two men, civilian clothing, both with the unmistakable posture that says gun holster, heavy weight at the side. Not police. Military. Secret service. He is never wrong. The Soldier rises slowly from the ground.

Perhaps they made him at the airport. It is possible. Hydra is everywhere, and where there are security cameras, there is Zola. Perhaps he should not have come through Berlin. Perhaps he should have tried for a small, quiet airport in Scandinavia. But he needed a direct flight, he needed crowds to become invisible. Could have been Charles de Gaulle, could have been Schiphol. In the end, when he walked across the airfield, among the crew loading the cargo bay, it had been a flight to Tegel. The Soldier learned not to question good luck. He disappeared in the belly of the plane without a second thought.

He takes his backpack and snaps the clip at his chest, in case he has to run. He's been to Berlin before, he knows the city even when he does not remember it. Already he maps the streets towards the east before his inner eye. The illuminated subway sign gleams blue at his right but he won't go underground. If they've really made him, if they know it's the Winter Soldier they're after, they will shut down the subway with a simple command. Once the subway is closed, he's trapped. There are tunnels down there, that much he remembers, but every tunnel has an exit point. And those are easy to guard if you have enough men. Manpower has never been a problem for Hydra.

No, he'll stay above ground and become part of the crowd. He's good at this, one of the best. Comrade Karpov taught him well (the narrow face appears in his mind, a young officer, a man approaching fifty, the last voice before cryosleep, strong arms steadying him when he stumbles from the tank). The Soldier can be whomever he wants to be – American student traveling on a shoestring budget, Polish carpenter looking for work, illegal but not an unusual sight. Or he can, can –

The crowd moves with a sudden purpose, not all of them but enough people to make the Soldier feel the change. The guy at his six gets up, smoothing down his pants. He gives the Soldier a smile, makes brief eye-contact and says, "Da läuft ein Film, um Mitternacht."

He speaks German with a heavy accent the Soldier cannot place, Italian maybe. _They're showing a movie at midnight._ The guy nods towards the theatre. The secret service men walk past the grassy triangle. They are heading towards the shortcut to the left.

"Umsonst," the guy says just when the agents disappear around the corner. "Null Euro." He adjusts his red cap to a more rakish angle.

The Soldier knows this tone of voice, half taunt, half invitation (not to a movie, that much is clear). He remembers the familiar sense of excitement. It's an old feeling, nothing the Red Room taught him but something from before.

"Klingt gut," he says, _sounds good_ , and without another word they move with the crowd, walking just a bit too close for strangers.

The theatre is small, with simple black lettering on the white marquee. [It feels like a relic from another time.](http://www.kinokompendium.de/babylon_kino_mitte.htm) The memory comes out of nowhere – golden light, red plush seating and women in glittering evening gowns: Loew's Wonder Theatre. He had never been inside; they never had the money. But he'd seen pictures.

Red Cap Guy steps through the theatre's double-winged door and holds it open for the Soldier. The glass of the door is so thick it shimmers green; the brass handles are polished golden. Inside, he takes the few stairs leading down into the lobby. The light is muted, throwing soft shadows against the walls. Perhaps eighty people crowd the space between the stairs and the doors to the auditorium. In the ruckus Red Cap Guy turns to the Soldier and points wordlessly to the ticket stand where a woman is selling candy and beer. The smell of fresh popcorn wafts towards him, salt and butter with a sugary tinge. His stomach gives a lurch, reminding him that he hasn't eaten in twenty-four hours. But it's too dangerous to attach himself to a civilian. The Soldier shakes his head, tries for a non-committal smile, and Red Cap Guy's off to get himself a beer.

Time to disappear into the woodwork of the building. The theatre is as good a place as any to lose his tails. Comrade Karpov kept reminding him of a botched kill job in GUM Kinozal on the Red Square. The Soldier has no memory of this but the fact stands: Movie theatres are notoriously hard to secure. If those secret service men made him. If they even spotted him. It's unlikely, but the Soldier does not take such risks, not when he's on the run, no backup, no handler, no intel to speak of. 

There's a disco globe in the center of the lobby. Small circles of light move across the walls, and on each side a staircase is leading up to the gallery. The Soldier moves fast. From behind the railing of the stairs he watches Red Cap Guy turn in all directions, taking a sip from the bottle of beer in his hand. It is almost midnight, and when he cannot find the Soldier, Red Cap Guy vanishes alone through the door of the auditorium. 

For a moment the Soldier considers the gallery. It's closed off to the public and likely he would have it all to himself. But security outweighs his longing for privacy. The gallery is a trap, easily blocked by whoever holds the stairs. He walks past the ticket counter, swiping chocolate bars with the casual confidence acquired in years of training. The best spies act in the open, visible to everybody, memorable to none. The guy checking tickets at the door of the auditorium waves him to hurry inside.

The theatre is maybe half full, 180 people at the most. Two exits in the back, three on each side. Those are hidden behind stiff curtains, recognizable as exits only because of the illuminated signs above. Fire safety, the Soldier assumes, for no one in their right mind would design a theatre with eight doors. It makes things easier, should anyone follow him. Not many doors can withstand the grip of his left hand, and he can quickly disappear through the basement of the building.

Red Cap Guy is sitting on the left, in the second row up front. The Soldier spots him at once. His height, the red cap, a certain bearing... None of the Winter Soldier's expertise is necessary to make this guy in a theatre that isn't even full. The Soldier moves along the rows, imitating the fumbling gait of a civilian coming late to the showing. The last four rows are empty, two couples sit in the next, empty seats stretch between them. The next row is the one the Soldier is aiming for – a single person occupies the seat closest to the aisle, then maybe ten empty seats, then a group of five. Their fast-paced American conversation is hushed but high-pitched; the Soldier can hear every word. He mumbles apologetically to the lone watcher and takes a seat halfway between the aisle and the Americans.

He's barely settled when the lights go out and a spotlight falls on a slender woman, dark short hair, she's wearing a gold lamé top. [The organist](http://www.babylonberlin.de/stummfilme.htm#Einzigartig), the Soldier realizes when she steps to the left where a movie organ stands. Idly he wonders about the oddity of live music at the movies. He calls up the memory from before but what he hits upon is not Loew's. Another picture house, but crowded, dark, the air soaked with the smell of beer. He can almost taste it on his tongue, bitter and too warm, a nickel a can. For a moment he regrets not having gone with Red Cap Guy who, the Soldier is certain, would have invited him for a drink.

Now the only light in the darkness is the pin-prick of neon above the organ. It makes the organist's gold-colored top gleam. There is no sheet music to be seen. The Soldier watches the organist arrange drawknobs and switches, then the movie starts on the big screen.

The organist moves her fingers over the keys, and music floods the theatre. It sounds as if an orchestra was playing up in the gallery where the Soldier can make out the organ pipes. The steady rhythm of a piano and bright, high-flying violin music accompany the silhouette of a man with a hat on the screen. Panel after panel of names scroll across the screen, English, the Soldier realizes, and old-fashioned in a way he hasn't seen in a long, long time. He feels himself drawn to the screen, to the way the actors talk with their faces and their hands. He remembers this, remembers black and white movies, this kind of music, his body warm and at ease. He touches the empty seat beside him. Slender fingers, he remembers, always cold, and a bony shoulder with unexpected strength. Someone asleep at his side in the dark while the movie was playing in front. 

The music turns quiet to accompany the deserted nighttime street on the screen. That's when the Soldier hears a soft whooshing sound at his feet. The impulse to pull his gun is overwhelming but he pushes it down. Decades of training mean perfect control, even now, weeks out of cryo. No smoke, no smell of gas that he can detect. The organ moves into a fast staccato tune; on the screen people are running. The Soldier tilts his head. Nobody is standing at the side doors, nobody is moving in on him from the back. The audience is riveted to the screen; there is a dead girl with blond curls lying on the street. The whooshing sound continues, but it's so quiet that the Soldier's certain only he, with his enhanced hearing, notices it. He moves his feet, sets one boot down carefully over a rip in the carpeting. The whooshing sound stops. He lifts his boot, and the sound returns, a soft exhale of air.

The Soldier allows himself an inaudible chuckle, something he's grown used to during the last weeks. A chuckle at his own stupidity. It feels good to have overreacted and have it be just that: an overreaction. The whooshing sound is part of the heating system underneath the floor. It's not a gas bomb aimed at the Winter Soldier, threatening to take almost two hundred innocent lives, to get at him.

On the screen the scene has changed from the street to the dress room of a theatre. A gaggle of girls, putting on make-up and wigs, all curls of bright, shining blond. The organist plays a medley of old-fashioned Broadway tunes. Now a typewriter head rushes from left to right, typing words on paper. _A woman_ , the Soldier reads, _embankment_ and _lower half of his face hidden._ The music surges, the beat in time with the outdated telegraph machine, and the Soldier finds himself pressing his boot down on the ripped carpeting with more force than necessary. There is no danger, he reminds himself, as he tries to settle back. This is not a mission. But _lower half of his face hidden_ , he reads, and he can feel the mask on his face, muzzle as much as protection. He stares at the screen, and memory overtakes him: a clear shot over dark water, the target a silhouette sharply outlined by the lights across the river. The music turns into a fast, hushed flitter of sounds. The rifle is aimed, the scope pressed to his eye and –

 _Murder_ , the screen screams, _Murder_ , black on white, white on black, and the Soldier shuts his eyes. He will not go there, won't let the memories overtake him. Not tonight. Not when he is still on the run. Carefully he reaches down to the floor with his left hand. He feels around the worn carpeting, and there it is, a loose carpet tack. It is thick and long, industrial-sized, but he uses the tip of his metal thumb to push it down. He flattens the carpeting and secures it with the heavy weight of his boot. There will be no bombs in the theatre tonight, murder will only happen on the screen. And he... he will make like Red Cap Guy, enjoy the comfort of the dark space, the music, the familiarity of the silent images on the screen. This is what people do, and he made himself a promise to be like people again.

It's an effort to keep his eyes on the screen where news of a gruesome murder are rolling off the presses. He focuses on the music, its dramatic crescendos, the quick-paced rhythm that accompanies the people running on the screen. A copper is talking to a woman. The grey in her hair is familiar – number 14, left door, the Soldier thinks, but doesn't hold on to the thought. This is remembering. What is happening on the screen is not memory, there is too much wrong about it – the missing colors are the least of it. The memories in his mind explode with green and red and silver, the misty blue of the sky. There is nothing soft-hued about the violet flowers clinging to a brick wall, bright red, dark brown, cool lemony yellow. And the smells! Sizzling grease from the dinky diner out front, the cabbage stench in the stairs day in, day out, motor oil always on his own hands, the smell of fish and the ocean in the air. And Friday, sweet Friday, the warm scent of yeast, when Mrs. Weinstein from upstairs is baking for Shabbat. The Soldier's stomach growls at the memory of apricot preserve in the heat of summer when he was with, was with –

On the screen people are gesticulating wildly over another dead body. Clunky cars are driving down the streets. The copper is blowing a whistle. It's ridiculous and clearly staged like a theatre play, but it feels like home. Home is Brooklyn, New York, United States of America. The Soldier does not remember this. He knows it because he read it in the museum. Not now, but sometimes when he is alone, he whispers the name under his breath. _Brooklyn_ feels different than _Moscow_ , and it sure feels different than the bank. But it doesn't feel like home. The movie does, even when the city is not New York and the colors are all wrong.

The movie tells the story of a killer whose victims are all blondes. The newspapers call him the Avenger, which makes the silent chuckle rise in the Soldier’s throat again. The movie also tells the story of a dark, brooding man with a scarf. He has taken lodgings with a housekeeper couple and their lively blonde daughter. The movie is painting him the suspect, and the Soldier considers it. But a killer who can wield a knife so quietly and fast, a killer who can get that close to his target and disappear instantly into the night after the kill – such a killer is trained, and no trained assassin would act as lovelorn and stupid as the lodger does. He will get himself in trouble, this man with his scarf, what with the way he is sneaking out of the house after midnight. The old lady is no fool. The copper, though – Joe, the Soldier's favorite – is blindsided because he's in love with Daisy, the blonde girl, even when a fool can see that she likes him but not like _that_.

Every once in a while, his mind on Joe and Daisy and the unhappy lodger, the Soldier glances to the left, where the organist's golden top glitters. Red Cap Guy has sunk so low in his seat that the Soldier sees barely more than the back of his cap. The theatrics of the music and the actors on the screen, the silent words that the Soldier can hear so clearly in his mind – it's unreal, and yet more real than any of the movies he'd watched in motel rooms and, at an odd angle, on the guards' monitor in the bank.

Another blonde girl gets killed (definitely not by the lodger), and they are calling them the Avenger's murders now. Suspicion, as predicted, rises against the lodger. It's all very thrilling, the Soldier assumes, but he is fascinated by the little things. The way the landlady pours first a bit of milk into the cup, then adds the coffee. The pipe her balding husband always puffs on. The flimsy box in which Daisy's dress is delivered. Even the knobbly light switches in the lodger's room feel familiar to him. In those upstairs rooms lingers a sense of emptiness, while the basement apartment is always crowded and alive.

Something about the layout of the kitchen niggles at the Soldier's mind. In the long years he lived in many places, not that he ever chose his home. He remembers a slow brown river and the thin air of a frozen land. He remembers the bank, but the bank was a prison. He's lived in headquarters, barracks, army bases. In a safe house with light blue trim and young, leafless trees in front. He lived in a city once, in a many-storied tenement building. They had just one room which was as crowded and alive as the landlady's kitchen. The table stood by the window just as it's standing in the kitchen on the screen: by the window but with enough room for a chair. Enough room for a person standing between chair and window, looking out onto the fire escape and further, into the yard and beyond the roofs. A tree grew in the yard, with huge dark green leaves. The Soldier knows this tree sketched in pencil, in charcoal, in soft crayon colors. In the background, violet flowers always cling to a brick wall.

The lodger in the movie, the Soldier thinks, wasn't looking for a room to stay. Stepping from the shadows into the light, scarf covering the lower half of his face, he was asking for a home...

The Soldier snaps awake at the sound of Russian spoken nearby. _Karpov._ His heartbeat spikes, even after all those years. But it's a woman's voice, her accent urban and familiar. She must be from Moscow just like Karpov was. The movie is over; the words _The End_ flicker in stylized cursive on the screen. The Soldier checks on Red Cap Guy, who is still sitting up front. Red Cap Guy waves at him with a smile. The lights go on and the Soldier fully returns to reality. He's been... asleep. Simply dozed off in the warmth, for what must have been long minutes. And he cannot let his guard down like this, not here, not yet. The Winter Soldier would be appalled at how careless he's become.

He checks the back of the hall, gallery, exits, the empty rows. The doors are wide open and people are already exiting the auditorium. No police. Nobody is waiting for him. They did not make him at the airport. He got away.

The organist walks towards the row where the Soldier sits. Without the neon light to make it sparkle, her golden top has lost its lustrous sheen. She is younger than he thought, and cold; he can see the goosebumps on her naked arms. "Я не возвращаюсь на родину", she says, and the Soldier realizes, she's the one he heard speaking Russian. _I am not going home._ Something about these words makes the Soldier want to jump up and run out into the street, to go somewhere, anywhere, home, wherever home may be. His left hand clenches and unclenches, a sense of urgency fills him that is a sign, a sure sign –

The Soldier focuses on the organist, this dark-haired Russian woman in the gold lamé top. She talks animatedly to a man who looks too old and frail to be up and around hours after midnight. They speak of mundane things, small complaints the Soldier assumes are part of an organist's everyday life. Keys gone sluggish, jammed pedals and, tonight, a stuck drawknob. The Soldier takes a few deep breaths. The movie theatre clearly does not have a lot of money, but these are things easily fixed. He finds himself longing for such simple tasks. Once he finds a home he will clean and oil the M4 in his backpack, put it together and apart again. He assesses what skills you need to dismantle a sniper rifle. He wonders whether they are very different from the skills you need to fix an organ.

It feels like early morning when the Soldier steps out of the theatre; a sense of expectancy, a certain quiet in the air. The lights of the theatre are still brightly lit, hours after midnight, but around him the square lies in darkness. The houses opposite are even darker shapes, above them glimmer the ever-present lights of Berlin.

"Hat's dir gefallen?" _Did you like it?_ Red Cap guy comes up behind the Soldier; he briefly touches the Soldier's left upper arm. 

It's an expression of their fleeting acquaintance, of this shared moment after the movie, and it's too light a touch for Red Cap Guy to notice the arm is not human. The Soldier likes how Red Cap Guy is just that half inch taller than him, a solid presence at his side. He is about to turn towards him when it hits him: Timişoara, Romania, 1989, mid-December. The Winter Soldier was there, another memory he quickly pushes away. But that's the accent. Red Cap Guy is from Romania.

"Filmul a fost bun," the Soldier says. _The movie was good._ He's testing out the language on his tongue.

"You speak Romanian." Red Cap guy sounds surprised but not overly so. He glances towards the square with the kind of post-movie glow that the Soldier assumes shows on his face, as well.

 _I just remembered_ , he doesn't say. "I learned it... long time ago. I... forget." He speaks slowly, with awkward pauses while he searches for the words. _Am cam uitat._ He needs to practice, that's for sure. The Soldier scans the perimeter: about twenty people are still out on the square, not counting him and Red Cap Guy.

"You're doing great." Red Cap Guy zips up his jacket and shoves his hands in the pockets of his jeans. "If you ever come to Bucharest, be sure to look me up."

It's not an actual invitation; they will never see each other again. But the thought and the warmth in Red Cap Guy's voice makes the Soldier consider it. Bucharest. Why not? When on the run, take the least expected route. The Soldier would have never thought of going to Bucharest, which makes it the perfect place for him to hide.

He tries to discover the plainclothes police he's sure must be around – this is a big city and the country's capital. He thinks he's found them, a man and a woman with a touristy look. They've been studying the menu of the vegan restaurant for much too long. But they are not after him. The man keeps glancing to the group of teenagers nearby, the same group the woman is observing in the reflection of the window of the restaurant. If the Soldier was looking for illegal drugs, this is where he would be looking, too.

Red Cap Guy is moving away from the theatre entrance, and the Soldier is moving, too. He nods goodbye, turns to the left and is about to step around the corner of the building when he catches the look in Red Cap's eyes. It's frank, appreciative and familiar from a memory so old – 

On instinct, the Soldier stops and asks, "Where do you live in Bucharest?"

"În Bucurestii Noi," Red Cap Guy replies at once and proceeds to give the Soldier detailed instructions about how to get to the [Parc Bazilescu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parc_Bazilescu_metro_station) station on the metro line M4. Maybe his invitation was more than just a friendly gesture, after all. It is risky, reckless even, to think of following these directions, to even consider hiding in a place that a stranger suggested to him in the street. But in his long life the Soldier has learned to trust instinct above all else. He will go to Bucurestii Noi and look for a place to stay.

He nods his thank-yous and says, "Seara buna." His mind already provides the phrase with ease. _Goodbye_ , and it's really goodbye now, for Red Cap Guy raises his hand, turns and walks towards the subway station.

The Soldier watches him go, takes in his broad back, his long purposeful strides. He thinks, military. A soldier. _A soldier like myself._ He turns left, towards the shortcut to Alexanderplatz. Already he maps out his route to Romania before his inner eye: Karl-Marx-Allee to get him out of city, the long way through Poland, Lódź, then Rzeszow, Kosice, Oradea. Thirty hours at the most, is the Winter Soldier's estimate. Monday morning, he will be in Bucharest.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to know more about the [Kino Babylon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kino_Babylon) where the Soldier watches the Lodger, and about the amazing movie organist Anna Vavilkina, follow the links in the text. 
> 
> This fic was workshopped in the 2017 [Fanauthor Workshop](https://fanauthorworkshop.tumblr.com/). Thank you so much, you guys! ♥ I don't think I've ever re-written a fic as often as this one. Xyai, I took a hard look at each "of course" and took out all of them but one. :) 
> 
> During workshopping, the question came up whether Red Cap Guy is Steve or Sam. He is not. :) But he reminds the Soldier of Steve, even when he does not really know it at this point in his recovery. Red Cap Guy is just a normal gay guy, and yes, this is a gay pick-up scene, something else that the Soldier remembers from his life before the Russians.
> 
> Thanks to littlesolnyshka and their [headcanon](http://littlesolnyshka.tumblr.com/post/144951098456/what-headcanons-do-you-have-of-bucky-adjusting-to) that Bucky's apartment in Bucharest is in Bucurestii Noi.
> 
> And thank-you to Spitandvinegar for the final beta, and to Andreea, who corrected my Romanian google translations. This has been a blast!


End file.
